Pasta al Pomodoro

Pasta al Pomodoro. Exactly. That’s spaghetti with tomato sauce. Any questions? All right then:

The simplest dishes that stand the test of time do so for one reason only: they are brilliant.

So it is with this one. One of the main reasons we’re writing about it is because of Carlo Cracco. This is a top Italian chef and his preparation is so subtle that you should know about it. He reduces the dish to the absolute minimum. He opts for garlic (we would always do the same), but against soffritto, the typical Italian base of finely diced onions, carrots and celery. And pretty much everything else.

Tomatoes are, of course, what this is all about. And we’ve described how to make a great tomato sauce here. We prepare it in large quantities, freeze it in portions and use it today, for example.

If you have this available, add peeled and halved garlic cloves to this sauce and concentrate it by simmering over a medium heat for about 10 – 15 minutes until it has lost a third of its volume.

If you don’t have this available, buy the best possible passata and simmer it with garlic and plenty of basil stems and leaves for around 20 – 25 minutes until it has lost half its volume. Then add a little salt to taste.

Signor Cracco uses whole, unpeeled and only slightly crushed garlic cloves

In addition to the result of these efforts, you need pasta – we recommend spaghetti (preferably alla chitarra) or slightly thicker varieties such as spaghettoni – the tastiest very small tomatoes you can find (“datterini”) and lots more basil.

Very good fresh tomatoes are usually only available for a short time each year. Nevertheless, fresh datterini are an important ingredient in this dish. In our opinion, canned tomatoes are only an alternative if you can’t get any good datterini at all. The manufacturer “Mutti” (we do not advertise and, as always, receive nothing for this) supplies the best peeled, full-flavored datterini we know of in cans. You can then drain them thoroughly and boil down the remaining tomato sauce or use it for other purposes. If you have any better suggestions, please send them to us (and the tomatoes so that we can test them too, thank you very much).

The small tomatoes are halved lengthwise. Many recipes that refer to Carlo Cracco mention blanching them so that they can be peeled. We definitely don’t do that, the effort is disproportionate and we don’t mind the delicate tomato skin in this simple dish at all. On the contrary.

The tomato halves are then roasted with a little olive oil on the cut surface over a medium-high heat until they have taken on a strong color. Not completely black, of course, but close to it. This takes about 5 minutes.

Some of the roasted datterini are added to the tomato sauce, they should melt gently and combine. The rest can be held back and added to the dish at the end.

We like to cut some basil into fine strips, some into coarse ones and some we add in whole leaves. The different intensity of the fragrances that develop in this way is a real joy for us.

Cook the pasta in well-salted water until about 2 – 3 minutes before the time indicated on the packet. Then lift it out of the water with tongs or a fork and put it straight into the pot with the reduced tomato sauce. This way, the pasta is fully cooked and absorbs a lot of flavour from the tomatoes. If there is a lack of liquid, simply add some of the starchy cooking water from the spaghetti.

All that’s left is attractive serving, for which we also keep back a few particularly pretty basil leaves. Cheese (Parmigiano or Pecorino or both) is not used by Carlo Cracco, but if you want some, you should of course not constrain yourself. The same applies to ground black pepper or a few more droplets of the best olive oil.

Enjoy.

And may the taste be with you.

Ingredients (for 2 people):

800 ml tomato passata (or 600 ml tomato sauce)

2 cloves of garlic

1 large bunch of basil (best leaves for presentation, the rest for the sauce)

A little salt

200 – 240 g spaghetti or spaghettoni (pasta secca)

A large handful of datterini

2 tbsp olive oil

(Everything else is up to you)